The exhibition Fossil Experience and its accompanying program addressed a number of the widely divergent – and in part violent – realities generated by the use of fossil fuels. The wealth accrued by specific social groups, nation states, and corporations by means of fossil fuels is inseparable from the ecological disasters at the sites where they are extracted, processed, and transported. In regions with high levels of energy consumption, including post-industrial urban centres such as Berlin, fossil energy and petroleum-based products are ubiquitous. A large part of electricity provision continues to be dependent on fossil infrastructure. At the same time, greenhouse gas emissions, toxic waste, and environmental damage arising from the production, transport, and burning of fossil fuels continue to be overlooked, or are downplayed by powerful institutions.

The notion of fossil experience points, on the one hand, to the experience of acceleration made possible by the widespread availability of cheap energy, particularly in the second half of the twentieth century. On the other hand, it refers to the traumas of extraction, exposure, and displacement, which threaten to further escalate as climate change progresses. The emphasis on the notion of “experience” underscores the fact that fossil energy and petrochemical products do not only exist “outside” of us or “elsewhere”: everybody has a fossil experience and in a global net of trade relations, resource extraction, production, and speculation, countless places and existences are connected to one another.

Fossil experience also bleeds into the long-awaited energy transition as, in the guise of a supposedly green capitalism, this transition is instrumentalised by a number of corporations to continue maximising profits. But it is neither sufficient nor acceptable to greenwash energy technologies that simply repeat dubious extractivist logics. Climate change and environmental devastation can only be addressed by centering demands for social and ecological justice, including environmental reparations.

Fossil Experience slowed down prevailing narratives about the energy transition, and investigated the legacy and scope of ongoing fossil fuel dependency. Located in a former water reservoir, the exhibition brought together artistic works and stories about geographies affected by the speculation and resource extraction involved in energy production. The exhibited works offered insight into the tight relationship between the capitalist growth imperative and ongoing colonial logics in relation to fossil energy sources. They focused on the wide-reaching consequences for interdependent human and more-than-human ecosystems, and acknowledged the political movements that advocate for their protection. Resonating with the former function of the site, the exhibition constantly returned to the threat posed by large-scale industrial projects to bodies of water.

Fossil Experience recognised that fossil infrastructures and energy politics continue to financially enrich specific social groups, nation-states, and companies. Concerned for the health of human and more-than-human ecosystems, the exhibition addressed experiences of violation and vulnerability caused by fossil realities which, if unchecked, will continue to call organised life on the planet into question. In doing so, the exhibition pointed towards aesthetic strategies in the representation of these realities as well as their possible undoing.

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Ayọ̀  Akínwándé

Ogoni Cleanup (2020)
Video performance, 2-channel video shown as split-screen, colour and sound, 3:44 minutes

In a 2020 performance, Ayọ̀ Akínwándé attempts to clean a river course in Ogoniland in the Niger Delta. The video documentation of Ogoni Cleanup shows how, with his bare hands, Akínwándé pushes water from one place to the other, adding clean water with a canister. Played in a loop, this activity seems to be both endless and futile.

In the Niger Delta, over half a century of oil extraction has left environmental damage on a gigantic scale in its wake, compromising the health and wellbeing of those who live there. In 1956, Royal Dutch Shell began extracting oil in the federal state of Bayelsa in the heart of the Niger Delta. From this point onwards, multiple national and international mineral companies have been active in the region. Oil pollution due to defective infrastructure, neglect of risk management procedures, and a lack of crisis intervention remain a constant problem. Humans, as well as more-than-human ecosystems, are significantly affected by the resulting environmental degradation, as well as air pollution and acid rain from the burning of expelled gases.

Akínwándé’s performance criticises the lack of efforts on the part of the government, as well as of international and national companies, in stopping oil pollution and cleaning local ecosystems. Leaks in infrastructure – which has in part already been shut down – often remain untreated for days or weeks, allowing crude oil to flow into water bodies, mangrove forests, and agricultural areas, while decimating fish populations and destroying harvests. People living in the Niger Delta are not only directly exposed to pollutants such as heavy metals and other components; their food security is also massively threatened.

In the title of the work, Ogoni Cleanup, which refers to the Niger Delta as Ogoniland, Akínwándé honours the presence of the Ogoni people, who have fought for decades for independence and against the destruction of their livelihoods. Founded in 1990, the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), led by Ken Saro-Wiwa, organised numerous protests, ultimately managing to push Shell to temporarily end its activities in Ogoniland. In the same year, the region was occupied by Nigerian military forces. Together with eight further fellow campaigners, Ken Saro-Wiwa was executed in 1995. Through their unyielding commitment, Ken Saro-Wiwa, the Ogoni Nine, and MOSOP have set an international example of resistance against the oil industry. At the same time, the case makes transparent the extent of violence to which nation-states and companies – in this case Royal Dutch Shell – are willing to resort in the Global South, while underscoring the level of danger to which activists in the Global South continue to be exposed.

Kat Austen

This Land is Not Mine (2020–2022)
20-channel video installation with soundscape, 14 minutes

Kat Austen’s multimedia project investigates Lusatia, a region that extends from the German federal states of Sachsen and Brandenburg to the voivodeships of Lower Silesia and Lubuskie in West Poland. Since the 1890s, the development of Lusatia’s economy and landscape has been determined by resource extraction. According to the Archive of Disappeared Places (Archiv verschwundener Orte), due to the expansion of the lignite (brown coal) industry, since 1924, a total of 137 places have been relocated and replaced with open cut mines and industrial infrastructure. Lignite, however, has led not only to loss. It has also created jobs in the region, and then as now, it has contributed to narratives about Lusatia’s identity. However, multiple identities coexist in Lusatia, and their histories predate current national borders.

This Land is Not Mine addresses these coexisting identities in Lusatia – which is home to the Sorbian cultural group and a plethora of further human and non-human beings – as it undergoes fundamental socio-economic transformation as a result of the phaseout of lignite-related industries. Consisting of twenty small-format screens, Austen’s audio-visual installation displays a series of vignettes registering impressions of Lusatia recorded by the artist over two years. The accompanying sound composition is comprised of field recordings gathered both by the artist and by those living in Lusatia, uploaded to the online platform Lausitzklang, which was specifically built for This Land is Not Mine.

The title of the work, This Land is Not Mine, incorporates a play on words in which multiple layers of the work begin to unfold. On the one hand, “the mine” as a site of extraction points to the fact that there are facets of Lusatia beyond the coal industry. There are countless further narratives that characterise the region, which shift and come to light as industry in the region undergoes rapid transition. On the other hand, the reference to “mine” as a possessive pronoun raises questions around property and land ownership, both in the sense of belonging and in relation to access rights. Are property relations, which in practice allow for human dominance over land and ecosystems, at all reconcilable with fundamental principles of sustainability? The title This Land is Not Mine also refers to the artist’s personal relationship to the region. Austen, who grew up close to the Welsh border in Great Britain, moves through Lusatia as a visitor. She encounters a landscape to which she does not belong – but where much is familiar.

The project This Land is Not Mine was funded by the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS), Potsdam, as part of an artistic research grant. The 20-channel video has been realised with help by Kazik Pagoda, aBe Pazos, and Will Greensmith. Sound recordings were contributed by Ili Os, Christina Kliem, Johannes Staemmler, John Grznich, Erik Lemke, and Martin Ballaschk.

Marjolijn Dijkman

Cloud to Ground #1 (2021–2022)
Floor installation with fulgurites (produced with sand from Genk (BE), Lommel (BE) and Manono (DRC), copper powder, cassiterite, lithium) and loose sand from Lommel (BE), dimensions variable

For her series Cloud to Ground, Marjolijn Dijkman has created artificial fulgurites by running electricity through sand and earth. These materials were acquired from sites where raw materials are extracted in Belgium and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Fulgurites form naturally when lightning hits the ground, where it can discharge up to 100 million volts in a split second. The heat released causes sand, rock, organic deposits and other sediments to fuse, or vitrify. The clumps and tube-like artefacts that form in the process are also known as “fossilised lightning”.

Cloud to Ground #1 arose as part of Dijkman’s research on the history of electricity and a series of experiments to render electric charges visible using various materials. In Cloud to Ground, Dijkman references the moment in Western European 18thcentury scientific research in which electricity began to be investigated as a natural phenomenon, and then systematically put to use. Whilst in contemporary living environments, electricity production often takes place out of sight and is generally taken for granted, during the Enlightenment in the 18th century, electric phenomena were often demonstrated in order to educate and entertain.

Some of the material vitrified in the fulgurites comes from Genk, a former coalfield in the Belgian province of Limburg. Coal was discovered in the area at the start of the 20th century and extracted from 1914 to 1988 in the Winterslag coal mine. In a Western European context, structural change in energy provision already began as early as the 1960s. Today, there is broad agreement that the full phase-out of coal-fired energy production must take place as soon as possible, as other technologies for generating and storing energy are put forward.

In this sense, the electrification of transport is a central factor in the energy transition. For this, battery technologies currently rely on lithium, a light alloy that is the object of increasing financial speculation. This means that resource extraction continues unabated in other places, for example in Manono in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a former Belgian colony where tin was mined from 1919 until 1982. In Cloud to Ground #1 Dijkman has also used sand from Manono. Currently, one of the largest lithium rock mines is being developed there by Austrian and Chinese companies. Through this, the material composition of the fulgurites raises questions relating to resource extraction, financial speculation, and electrical technologies in light of ongoing asymmetries in global power relations.